If you are like many boaters, diving around to check out fish, ship wrecks, and other underwater curiosities probably gets you excited. If you are looking to shave a couple of bucks off of your boating budget but don't want to sacrifice the underwater scenery, you can try ditching the expensive scuba gear for some serious free diving! In this awesome TED Talk, revered magician and illusionist David Blaine explains how he is able to hold his breath for a record breaking 17 minutes!

You won't likely achieve such Spartan level heroics in a couple of weeks, but you can easily improve your free diving times to Houdini-esque levels in just a couple of days. From BoingBoing.net...

My first baseline test: 40 seconds.

15 minutes later: 3 minutes and 33 seconds (!!!).

Out of roughly 12 TEDMED attendees he also taught, all but one beat Harry Houdini’s lifelong record of 3 minutes and 30 seconds. One woman held her breath for more than 5 minutes.